Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

I just got a job with a social network that promotes active lifestyles. As a result, they want us to be active as employees. Although it's a very small office, they had a shower installed so employees could take a break to go work out, come back, and clean up. If we work out 6 times a month, we get paid an extra $40 at the end of the month (enough to pay for most gym memberships here). While the actual job has unavoidable periods of sitting, at least the company encourages us to get moving when we're able.

This points out a serious flaw in the whole idea of cloud reliability by redundancy. You may have a million servers running across multiple countries, but if the distributed software for each virtual server has a bug, every server across the globe is affected. That's a single point of failure.

My greatest fear with brain enhancement technology is that it creates a super-class of humans. Those who have the ability to pay for the technology will have a majorly unfair advantage against those who don't, creating a dangerously elite group of people.

I should say "A successful movement has a well-defined goal and an end game with a mature means to reach it."

There are many problems in the world. However, Anon reminds me of a shark in a large school of fish. The shark attacks this way and that, but it can't focus on just one fish. It's constantly-shifting focus causes it to lose all of its targets in the end (almost maybe a few go down through sheer luck).

If Anonymous were a legitimate organization worth respecting, they wouldn't be doing stupid shit like uploading an intercepted FBI/Scotland Yard conversation regarding their own investigation. Even if the U.S. were equivalent to Nazi Germany, I still wouldn't endorse Anon. A legitimate movement has a well-defined goal and an end game with a mature means to reach it.

Please avoid personal attacks on Slashdot just because you don't agree. Yours was particularly tasteless and inflammatory.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it would seem that revolutions gained high traction through Facebook and Twitter because those services already had a huge user base (and therefore a huge potential audience). If you create your own social network catering to people already in your movement, you can't really expect the massive increase in followers you would gain through already-popular networks.

If you think of it in harsh terms, this is merely another social network knock-off, fueled by what will probably be a short-lived movement.

So if I wanted to efficiently pack small spheres, that would only help me if I stored them in a bunch of long, thin cylinders. I guess if the long, thin cylinders could be packed together efficiently, that wouldn't be an issue.

I recently read the IEEE paper "How to be a Star Engineer" (Google it, it's a great read). The researcher conducted a study on common traits shared among the industry's top performers. Turns out that being extremely intelligent was not really a significant factor. In fact, the star engineers failed to demonstrate a commonality in any of the traditionally emphasized areas of cognitive, psychological, social, or organizational superiority. It essentially boils down to how they used their existing skills in a smart, positive manner. Effective teamwork and communication are listed as huge factors, so I don't see how an IQ test can really be the magic bullet to finding a great employee.

First of all, I love science. It is a great tool for understanding our universe based on the resources we have to fuel our research. The scientific method gives us a foundation on which to build our knowledge, but it only generates undeniable facts under strictly controlled environments. All else can be considered evidence but can't honestly be considered truth.

The annoying thing about evidence is that it falls victim to a degree of subjectivity. No one is completely objective (unless one tossed out any and all non-empirical data), so interpretation and extrapolation of the evidence will always be influenced by philosophical and ideological values. I'm not necessarily talking about religion. Even the most rigid-minded scientist has a philosophical view of how the universe should function. After all, how do you objectively define what deserves attention and what does not? Even if it concerns the survival of the human race, who's to say that our survival is worth pursuing? That's where science ends and humanity begins.